We were already having a righteous good time at Doug Chaffin’s house earlier this week when suddenly in walked a young guitar player who would ratchet things up to a whole new level of coolness.
Now, Josh Woods is old friend of our newest Floodster, Danny Cox, but it turns out his roots go even deeper than that. That’s because we learned that Doug Chaffin used to regularly jam with Josh’s dad, John Woods.
Needless to say, there were lots of stories between the tunes that night, with Danny, Josh and Doug remembering mutual friends over the years. At one point, there was even a phone call from Josh’s dad, affording Doug and John a chance to chat for the first time in a while.
The Les Paul
Shoot, even the classiest guitar in the room got in on the magic.
Now, before Josh even arrived that night, Doug already had brought out the wonderful old Gibson Les Paul that his own father bought him back in 1958. (The guitar was brand new, of course, when Doug got it as a teenager; heck, Doug even still has the sales receipt for that transaction!)
These days, this classic instrument seldom leaves the protection of the Chaffin home, and when Josh settled into the chair at his side that night, Doug put this honey of a Gibson into the young man’s hands to play the whole evening. The symbolism wasn’t lost on any of us: the guitar that had been present at jam sessions with the father was now being played by the son.
Want to hear it?
Here are Danny and Josh trading choruses on some down-home blues, including our rendition of Ray Charles’s “Hard Times,” the 1961 single Atlantic released to promote the darn-near perfect The Genius Sings The Blues album.
It was quite a night.
Postscript
By the way, if you’d like to know more about the song “Hard Times” and the album on which it was born, click button below to see an earlier Flood Watch entry.
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